All that is truly worthwhile takes labor to accomplish. Skill is a side-effect of that labor—it’s secondary—and talented or inspired does not, by any means, mean easy. That’s the joy of beauty; it takes effort. It takes love.
Writing isn’t all that different from whittling. I reflected on that idea this past summer, since I spent plenty of time doing both. On the one hand, I had decided to take up my whittling knife for the first time in a few years, transforming a block of basswood into a miniature sailing ship. On the other hand, I was in the midst of re-writing a manuscript that has been in process since the end of 2015 (which, incidentally, also involves a sailing ship). One was a labor of the hands, the other, of the mind. One starts with an abundance of material, the other starts with almost nothing tangible. And, yet, whittling isn’t all that different from writing.
Well, think about it like this: both start out having very little form. Both begin with a vision. Both are laborious.
Over the summer, I sat in my backyard and scraped little golden curls of basswood onto the patio until my head and hands ached. I shaped a hull, estimated a center-line for the keel, chipped out the shape of the bow and stern, and added a new scar to my left hand in the process. After a while, I thought I was satisfied, so I traded the knife for sandpaper and began to smooth down the edges. I was wrong. There was still another layer that needed to be carved away. In fact, the more the shape of the Molly Bán became visible, the more it revealed other layers that needed shaping.
The process with my manuscript has been much the same. I’ve spent three years with this project; coaxing it to expand from a paragraph to a scene and from a scene to a story. Details and names changed and changed again. I finished writing out the official first draft in the summer of 2017, and thought I might burst from excitement. It was a milestone, to be sure—up until then I had never finished a piece of writing that long and complex. Editing, I thought, would be the easy part. Only, the longer I spent trying to smooth down the rough edges, the more I realized that the edges needed more definition. I rewrote entire scenes. Then I started to rewrite the entire thing, copying from what I had saved and printed. Halfway through that edition, I had a major breakthrough. It only took a few minutes of thought. I had started sketching out a timeline on a sheet of paper when clarity hit. I realized what I had to do: rewrite again.
More tea, more words, more labor.
Carving and carving and carving—with each layer comes rejoicing. The plain block of wood gains detail and definition; the story gains depth and enchantment. With each layer comes the necessity for more labor—more stiff curls to brush into the bushes, or another revision to agonize over.
The ancient Greeks said it this way: the beautiful is difficult. Whether one is dealing with a book-length manuscript or a 500-word essay, the principle is the same. Carve until the idea takes a shape and the shape takes on details and the details are brushed with color. The Molly Bán has long since been sanded, painted, and set on the shelf. The injury I sustained in the process is nothing more than a faint stripe on my forefinger. The work is finished. Someday, I hope to set aside my literary carving knife and focus on the figurative sanding and painting. In the meantime, I will continue to rejoice over each layer and revelation, knowing that the day will come when I proudly set the finished work—my labor of love—on the shelf.